For the last few days, I've been help­ing my friend Dan out with some things. Suf­fice his issues to say that I was basi­cally the only friend he had left. Any­way, he had been pretty down about it and he came to me. I was glad to help him, partly because I didn't want him to feel bad, but also because I had hoped that this would rekin­dle our old friend­ship. Well, after things had sub­sided and every­thing seemed cool with him and his other friends again, he seemed to not want me around any­more. But see­ing his relief, I didn't say any­thing at the time …

Cut to: Tonight. In a blaze of frus­tra­tion, I called Dan on the way home. We talked for over an hour about this, and I told him exactly how I felt, that I felt I had been used because he had no one else left, and when he did, he didn't need me any more. So we decided to make a more con­scious effort to make time for each other. I guess we'll see how that goes …